Since the middle of January our boys have enjoyed being a part of a basketball league hosted by our church. This is a very neat outreach as every practice has a devotional time lead by the coaches and then during halftime of the games our pastor shares a little and has a short prayer time. And of course the boys are having a blast as this is their first time every being apart of a team. My favorite part is watching the boys reactions when they actually make a basket during the game. They are just so surprised when it goes in that they look like they are in complete shock every time it happens. The following are a few pictures of the boys playing ball.
On Thursday Greg brought home our four crates that we will use to ship all our belongings to Papua. The one on the left that is put together already actually came from MAF as they had one we could take off their hands. This will be the crate that Greg will use to put his tool box and all his tools inside for the ship ride over.
These next two pictures are the remaining of our crates that Greg will have to assemble with the help of the children. As you can imagine our family is very excited about the fact of the crates arriving as this means we are getting that much closer to heading to Indonesia. This is just such a exciting and stressful time as we are in the middle of visa paperwork and know we can begin sorting and packing for life in Indonesia. (Julie)
On the technical front, last week the Cessna 182 bound for Mexico got to a point where it was no longer necessary for extra help. So this week I've had the privilege of working on MAF's newest Grand Caravan that is bound for East DRC. If you look closely at the engine there are some pieces of green tape covering the holes I left behind by removing the fuel nozzles They wanted to photograph the inside of the engine to document the current condition and the best way to access the turbine wheel is through the nozzle ports. I have no experience yet on turbine engines to speak of so this was a treat from me to get the chance to smell like jet fuel. Something that I'm sure will get old pretty quick but for now I will enjoy every chance I get to learn more about turbine engines. The picture to the right is one of the fuel nozzles that fit into the holes mentioned above. The last couple days however with the distraction of our crates arriving and standardization right around the corner and the need to start inventorying things for our crates, I pulled myself away from the project. Distractions and working with critical systems like the fuel system don't mix well. Next week however I hope to jump back into the project briefly to re-install the nozzles under the direction of a very experience Caravan Mechanic.
This Caravan also has an interesting story. It is S/N 2000 build in 2008. It was privately owned and was configured as a luxury executive aircraft. It's paint scheme had an African Zebra look to it and the interior was covered with Zebra skin. Then 2 years ago at Sun & Fun a tornado flipped it on it's back on top of a JAAR's Helio I believe. The owner sold it to a Christian company that does major repair work to Caravans and then sells them to mission organizations like ourselves So here it now sits once looking like it came from Africa and now it gets to go to Africa and serve the people of East DRC. (Greg)
Blessings from the Dole clan.
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